Williston Golf Course 

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid day sun!

The hottest day of the summer season so far and Mary and I had 10:30 AM tee times with some friends a the Williston Golf Course just outside of Burlington VT. The temperature on the course, per the thermometer in my Subaru, registered 98 degrees. Ouch!

The golf course was quite nice. Very well manicured with lots of flower gardens spread around the course. This was our first time playing at Williston. It was a very nice layout and we can recommend it if you are in the area.

A quick bit of housekeeping on the blog from last week. From all indications the Killington Wine Festival was a success. Our wine dinner at the inn on Saturday night went very well. The dishes we prepared and served perfectly matched the wines we selected to go with them. Two of the dishes stood out as being very unique. One was a vine ripened tomato stuffed with a Vermont sweet corn polenta. The other was the dessert: a Black Forest soup with a hand dipped cherry and handmade chocolate truffle.

West Side Red 

As we prepare for our wine dinner tomorrow night as part of the Killington Wine Festival, today was "Chocolate Day". For dessert, we are featuring a "Black Forest Soup" which consists of a combination of Cherry and Chocolate soups. In addition, dessert will also feature hand made chocolate truffles, and hand dipped chocolate covered cherries. All told, I pitted 4 pounds of cherries, and chopped over 5 pounds of really nice chocolate to put everything together. Several of us are still buzzing this evening from the chocolate hit we have been taking all day. (You need to sample things to make sure they come out ok... yeah right!)

The chocolate, cherries, and previously mentioned cheeses are being served with a 2002 'West Side Red" from Paso Robles. This is a nice Rhone blend of Mouvredre, Syrah and Grenache. For those of you who like wine, it has well structured tannins with an up front sweetness of plums and berries, with a nice long round finish. It will be a great finish to tomorrow nights dinner.

Killington Wine Festival
Wine Tasting at Killington Peak 

I had the good fortune of taking the K1 gondola to the top of Killington today for an afternoon of wine tasting. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it!

The Killington Wine Festival kicked off this afternoon with a private wine tasting at the Killington peak restaurant for the "trade", better know as retailers, restaurant, and bar owners. The 4 primary wine distributors in Killington collectively brought almost 200 wines from around the world to be tasted in the afternoon event.

The purpose of today was twofold. First and foremost to the distributors, they had a chance to showcase their wares to people responsible for buying and presenting wine to the general public. In addition to that, it was also a chance to dry run the Killington venue before the open public tasting of the same wines on Saturday afternoon.

If you have a chance to go to the tasting on Saturday, check out some of my favorites from this afternoons tasting: Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Pinot d'Alsace from France and K Syrah from Australia at the G. Housen tables; Sincerely Sauvignon Blanc and Shiraz from Sourh Africa, and Cadonini Pinot Grigio from Italy at the Baker tables; White Oak Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley at the Vermont Wine Merchants tables, and Liberty School Shiraz from Paso Robles and Hayman and Hill Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands at the Farrell Distributors tables.

Crowley Cheese Company, Healdville VT. 

Another one of the cheeses to be featured at the wine dinner at Birch Ridge on Saturday night comes from the Crowley Cheese Factory in Healdville Vermont. Believed to be the oldest continously operating cheese factory in the western hemisphere, Crowley's cheesemaking history began in 1824, but it was not until 1882, when Winfield Crowley built the present-day factory.

Crowley Cheese is made a few hundred pounds a day in the same building entirely by hand, exactly the same way as in the last century. The cheese, classified as a Colby, is similar to English Style cheddars, but not as acidic or dry. It has a nice sharpness, but it is also quite creamy in texture. At the wine dinner on Saturday night at Birch Ridge, Crowley Cheese will be one of the featured cheeses served with the dessert course.

Plymouth Cheese Company, Plymouth VT. 

The Killington Wine Festival is set to run this coming weekend. Here at Birch Ridge, we will be hosting a wine dinner on Saturday evening. For the food to go with the wine, we have aimed somewhat at a Vermont theme, featuring where ever possible items procured in Vermont. One of the items we are going to integrate into the dinner is cheese produced at the Plymouth Cheese Factory, in Plymouth Vermont, at the Calvin Coolidge birthplace.

The cheese is a "granular stirred curd" cheese, produced at the Plymouth Cheese Factory by a company whimsically named Frog City Cheese. The cheese is made using an original process handed down by the Coolidge family for generations. The cheese has a tangy, rich flavor, and will be used at the wine dinner as one of the table cheeses accompanying the dessert course.

Innkeepers Bill Vines and Mary Furlong (right) of the Birch Ridge Inn at Killington give "Team Killington" organizers Noel and Dick Gluck (left) a check for $480.00 to support the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. 

Mary and I were very happy to donate the proceeds from a special Sunday brunch we held at the inn on June 25th to raise money for "Team Killington" and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. We had a little check handing ceremony in a side garden at the Inn over the weekend to provide the check to "Team Killington".

For the last several years, good friends of ours, Dick and Noel Gluck, have organized other Killington area residents and guests to form "Team Killington" to participate in the Vermont "Race for the Cure" to raise funds for the Komen foundation. Last year they organized almost 100 runners to trek down to Manchester Vermont for the "Race". This years race takes place on July 30th. If you would like to sponsor "Team Killington" you can get in touch with me through the contact link of killingtonblog, and I will link you up with the Glucks. They would love your support for this good cause.

Green Mountain National Golf Course

Hole # 14 

If you have ever been interested in playing golf in Killington, now is a great time. The rains that the area had several weeks ago have resulted in beautiful lush green golf courses.

Both the Killington Resort Course and the Green Mountain National Golf Course have dried out nicely from the soaking rains of June. And it's a good thing as well. During July, local play changes. In June the area hosts a large number of Charity golf tournaments. In July, it gets more more personal with club championships and president's cups on the line.

Thus far in the July tournaments, the innkeepers of Birch Ridge have had mixed results. Mary played her Presidents Cup match on Monday. Unfortunately she went down to defeat when her opponent holed a chip shot on the 18th green. I faired a little better. My round earlier today started ugly, but I played the back nine at Green Mountain in a 4 over par 39 (with a double bogey on the 18th) beating my opponent 4 and 2 on the 16th green, to advance to the next round.

If you like golf, and you have a chance to come to Vermont, you should really think about playing a few rounds on the great courses at Killington this summer.